1. The Field of the Invention
This invention relates to apparatus and methods for distributing electronic information signals in a structure.
2. The Prior Art
For most of civilization's recorded existence, information has traveled from person to person via face-to-face communication or via tangible documents. With the introduction of the telegraph and the telephone the transmission of information became faster. With the later introduction of broadcasting, the transmission of the same information to vast numbers of people became almost immediate.
The concept of broadcasting has dominated information transfer during the twentieth century. Throughout the century, the customary approach in the information dissemination industry has been to distribute the largest possible quantity of identical information to as many locations as possible. In contrast to the customary wisdom in broadcasting industry, the promise of the new information transfer technologies is allowing point-to-point transmission of only the information which the recipient desires to receive.
The explosive growth and progress made in digital electronics, and particularly the popularization of the general purpose microprocessor, has propelled the information revolution now being experienced in industrialized societies. Along with the promise of delivering massive amounts of customized information to a recipient, has come the challenge of providing transmission media which can furnish the immense amount of spectrum bandwidth necessary to accommodate the digital information carrying such information.
While numerous parties have solutions for providing the broad bandwidth necessary for getting the necessary digital information to a curbside location, relatively little attention has been given to distributing the digital information inside of the building at the end user's location, particularly residential dwellings. Until most recently, a twisted pair of wires carrying a bandwidth limited telephone signal, and in some cases a coaxial cable carrying television signals, was considered all the information transfer media which could be desired in a structure.
With recent developments, an explosion in the amount of information which is delivered to a residential or commercial location is about to occur. References to an “information super highway” are raising the expectation that every member of a modern industrialized society will soon have access to vast amounts of information for education, business, and entertainment. Moreover, the promise is being made that this information will be delivered to both commercial and residential locations in an easy-to-use format.
Unfortunately, the promise of the information super highway has the potential of becoming another unused complicated piece of technology, particularly for the residential customer. While not recognized generally in the industry as a problem, each of the utility companies, including electric power service providers, telephone service providers, and cable television service providers, are all promising and vying to be the provider of the medium which will convey the information super highway to the multitude of residential and business customers. In order to accommodate the bandwidth needed to carrying the data on the information super highway, utility companies are proposing to devote enormous resources to installing fiber optic media, or other wide bandwidth media, to each structure within its service area.
Disadvantageously, each of the utility companies is developing and proposing proprietary protocols and hardware. Unfortunately, each of the proprietary protocols are (purposefully in some cases) not compatible with the other protocols. Some utility companies hope that their protocol can become the “standard” for the industry and thus control the market. For example, once the medium is selected, whether fiber optic cable, coaxial cable, or a microwave radio frequency link, the common understanding is that each utility company will provide a “box,” i.e., hardware, which will receive the information signals conveyed on their particular medium and will process the information signals in whatever way is necessary to make it useful to the customer. Unfortunately, the outlook for the customer is that there will be a multitude of “boxes” installed within each residential or commercial structure. It appears that, for example, the local electric power provider may require a box which will interact with a television while the local cable television provider may require a PC compatible computer and Windows™ based programs with the local telephone service provider requiring the purchase of a new “smart telephone.” As a further example of a utility provider is a direct satellite broadcast subscription service which requires the lease or purchase of a box for each television or device used to access the service.
In order to gain access to the information super highway, subscription to one or more of the utility company providers will be necessary in the future. Disadvantageously, under the proposed schemes, every location at which access is desired, for example in a kitchen, bedroom, den, and entertainment room in a residential structure, will require a box at each location. In other words, access at multiple points in a structure will require the purchase or rental of several boxes.